Blog

First up, I've decided not to connect my troughline tuner to the stereo decoder in the Hitachi FT5500 I have, but to built a separate decoder from scratch. Sourcing some of the capacitors wasn't easy 'til I looked at Digikey, what a range! The decoder ic will come from Cricklewood Electronics, and all, including de-emphasis amplifiers, will be put in a nice octagonal die-cast box, from Rapid (online).

I want to connect up my receiver/dvd player, with 5.1 output, so I was looking at loudspeaker cable to do the couple of lengthy runs to the side 'speakers. Settled on two pairs (bass/mid and treble/super tweeeters) of Van Damme cables, one especially for L/S's, one a silver coated copper cable, for the tweeter and super-tweeter (ribbon). For my main 'speakers' tweeters I've ordered (some time ago) some ptfe covered silver plated copper wire, which had to be wound especially. Nobody buying this kind of wire?

Bought some (20!) loudspeaker 4mm banana plugs for the whole setup, and 10 pairs of Neutrik phono's for interconnects, together with Van Damme XKE instrument cable, which is supposed to be the bee's danglies.

With an eye to testing materials for support feet, I bought some 10mm thick rubber washers, and some 50mm s/s and zinc plated steel penny washers, together with other materials. Lots of work to get on with.